NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

TIME HAIKU is an established and thoughtfully compiled magazine, that celebrates the diversity of the conventional haiku, while providing a platform for the evolution of the form within and beyond its more familiar boundaries.

Where those boundaries should lie is not an argument rehearsed in this edition. Commentary and review are reserved for the last few pages, as part of a deliberate policy of putting the poetry first.

Several poets contribute brief haiku sequences, or groups to the opening of the issue. The featured poet, Bill Wyatt, supports his verse with reflections on the form. He characterises the poems well, choosing a good verb:

We inflict our own ... perceptions as we write a haiku.

I would say that I write from the prospect of kacho fuei (poems written about birds and flowers).

                    Such intimacy -
          in the winter wind, snowdrops
                    covered by snow.

          Night's
          symphony
          plays

          Silence.

          Among branches: caught
          in the swaying drip and trawl
          of their tangled nets.

          Languishing in prison —
          spring rain takes me back
          to my youth.

          If I was a dog
          eat from a trashcan
          even chase a bus.

                    pink butterfly
                             wrapped in cloud
          flying away from a workhouse building.
                                       OUTSIDE/ INSIDE

          Tangerine tinted clouds
          Above the vicar's
          Eyebrow.

                    So much depends
          On this blue winged butterfly
                    curled in my fist

In the second half of this issue, TIME HAIKU develops its exploration of the form. Longer pieces by Joanna Ashwell and Terry Daley are placed judiciously above the same authors' haiku, thereby inviting the reader to consider how one kind of verse can evolve from another. A further eight pages of generally informative reviews are followed by a brief editorial.

This is a successful magazine with commendably catholic tastes that invigorate one of the most accessible poetic forms. It is international in its scope and clearly aims to promote the good writing of a large number of contributors. However, the house style is surprisingly self-effacing, with no contents page and some prose contributions which, in their brevity, assume too much of the general reader, without explaining technical terms such as 'Hosomi'. The HAIDAN NEWS on the back cover turns out to be a dislocated introduction to poems at the front of the magazine. There is a persuasive argument to the effect that the visual impact of this form is reduced by TIME HAIKU's small typeface, which squeezes up to seven poems on each page. Might less achieve more?

Despite the magazine's title, the contents do not just include haiku but also more conventional poetry. Alice Beer's COACH TOUR TO THE LAKES might look like haiku to some readers, but it is a poem consisting of a sequence of unhaikulike images; the best such as

	Becks etched deeply in
	steep fell sided, like scratch marks by
	prehistoric beasts.

Nonetheless there is a generous offering of genuine haiku with most contributors given a page to display five or six offerings. Steve Baggs' are under the general heading of FLOOD:

	Two foot to ten foot
	a watery giant climbs the wall
	lapping the window

Haiku is for me a way of crystallising an instant's recognition of a shared experience that remains always vivid and present. It accepts the present tense as something continuing, not part of the process that turns experience into the past tense.

I thought I knew about haiku and tanka, but it seems from this periodical, a specialist one in the field, that they are in the nature of "in the spirit of" rather than strict syllable-counting genres — though most of the haiku here, and the magazine largely consists of them, are in fact strict 5/7/5 poems: the tanka seem to "get away with" a good deal more (nor are most of these translations, which by custom are allowed some latitude). As for the haibun, seemingly an evocative prose piece which breaks out ad lib. into bits of three-line poetry which may or may not be haiku...

The final piece in this number, under the heading TIME SAIJIKI, breaks out into an article about the swallow, "amorous cats", and the butterfly, and quotes Basho and many another Japanese poet (and John Clare and George Crabbe), and offers some plain-language Japanese poems as well as translations. All truly interesting. But I think that for the non-specialist reader, the best way to approach the magazine is to browse amongst its many short poems, and to reflect that the most obvious benefits conferred on poetry as a whole by the rediscovery of the haiku form is to provide a model which relatively-inexperienced writers, e.g. children, can use as one of their growing points, as well as reminding the rest of us that being a garrulous poet is less effective than being a brief one. Or, as one haiku by Christopher Hirst puts it:

	A Japanese girl.
	Her  mysterious smile.
	Perfect like haiku.

	half-hidden in snow
	yellow flame of a crocus
	meets the morning sun

	a single figure
	standing at the ocean's edge
	how tiny he looks

	shrieking with laughter
	Jack slides down to the sand pit
	at Grandma's funeral

There are several reasons why TIME HAIKU is exactly what one wants in a literary magazine: it is clearly and attractively printed, substantially bound, with a low-key presentation reminiscent of some stately academic journals. But most importantly, it includes new work by more than sixty authors, with so much that is really pleasing, that it is hard to know what to quote, as no single piece, or single style, can claim to be emblematic of the whole. Here are a few of my favourites:

	Dressing on the beach
	the sea-wind puts its legs
	into my trousers.

	Graham High

		sharp through mourner's coat
		age-eroded shoulder-blades:
		nubs of angel wings

		Helen L. Conway

	new mare next door
	the gelding stares over a single
	electric wire

	Jack Berry